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Published: October 1st 2010
After arriving back in La Paz at 6am after an 11 hour over night journey (from hell- bloody bumpy road) from the salt flats tour, we decided to try and chck in to a different hostel (the Adventure Brew) with an Aussie couple we had met on the tour. As it was so early the hostel said they wouldn't know until lunch time if they had a room so we took advantage of the free breakfast pancakes and used the internet while Scott watched some football. Lunchtime finally came and we were a bit disapopinted with the room they had offered us so we quickly hopped accross town to see if the Loki (where we stayed before) had a double room for us, luckily they had a room available so after checking out of the AB 15 minutes after we checked in we went back again accross town to the Loki hostel and were much happier back there.
We had heard about a local Bolivian tradition called Cholita Wrestling (think WWF, with worse actors and small Bolivian women headlining the event!) which takes place once a week on a Sunday evening and as we had nothing planned we decided to
give it a go and went with a group from all the hostels in the area. The arena (small town hall in the worst area of La Paz (Alto)) was packed with locals seated around the edge of the stage, but as we are gringos we were lucky to have ringside seats! We were slightly concerned when we got off the tourost coach when the tour operator told us we could throw small light objects in to the ring at the wrestlers if we desired...!
The night turned out to be one of the most bizarre and hilarious nights we have experienced so far. The first match saw spider man take on skelator with random theme tunes frokm Rocky thrown in at various intervals to spur the crowd on. This match lasted around 20 minutes and some of the acting was atrocious! There were a few more matches like this with a title decider between them. After around an hour of this two women were introduced to the ring, dressed in full Bolivian gear, including hair plaited down to their waist, and various objects (planks of wood, metal bars and steel chairs) we hidden under the ring and occasionally a
random child from the crowd would run under and pick one of them to throw into the ring to 'help' the contestants...during this the male referee would 'intervene' and beat down on one of the women and pull their hair etc - it was crazy to see this although it was only acting this would never be allowed in the UK!
Last up was the 'main event' which saw a evil looking local woman take on the super star of the federation- a fat Bolivian man with a shaved chest bulging out of a mini leotard- nice! The crowd by this point was fired up (the locals anyway- us gringos weren't sure what was happening) and all of a sudden a few tomatoes and squashed oranges started to make their way into the ring, aimed at the evil looking woman wrestler. With that she jumped out of the ring and started grabbing peoples drinks and throwing them back at the crowd, which really got everyone going and all of a sudden popcorn, peanuts, bottles, half eaten hot dogs and more fruit was raining down on her from the crowd! We both enjoyed throwing a bit of popcorn but didn't quite
feel the need to throw everything we had on us and salivate like a rotweiller as the locals were- they obviously take this sport very seriously! The match concluded when the woman accidentally throw powder/flour into the referres eyes and the good guy managed to get a quick pin.
We were then ushered quickly to the tourist van (leaving the local's to it) and on the way back we stopped and had the chance to take some panoramic pictures of the city of La Paz at night. All in all a fun and crazy night!
The next day, we awoke feeling fresh after our first decent nights sleep in 6 days and after breakfast decided to book onto a mountain, horse riding tour for later that day. After breakfast as we had some time to kill, we decided to walk to the district of San Pedro to see the famous 'San Pedro Prison' which we had heard and read so much about - There is a pretty famous book based on the prison called 'Marching Powder' if any of you are interested. Anyways, we arrived at the gates expecting just to see the outside of a highly guarded prison,
but instead were greeted with views of the prison courtyard which contained various prisoners walking around smoking/playing football and trying to lure passers by towards the gates. We had heard you can actually visit the prisoners in there cell's and this has to be arranged by a fixer - an infamous local woman called Fabiola who has been mentioned in several books. As we walked back through the main square, non other than the woman herself came up covered in jewellery and make-up and introduced herself and explained to us how the visits work and if we were so inclined we could come back and book a vist to a prisoner through her, whilst bribing some guards in the mean time!
After getting back to our hostel we were picked up to start our hourse riding adventure. We were taken to a ranch about 40 minutes in the hills where we were kited out in riding hats and leather leg covers and shown to our horses. We were expecting quite small horses, as Scott had never ridden before aqnd it had been a good 10 years since Vic had ridden, whcih we told the ranch, so we were quite
surprised to be shown 2 huge stallion types! After looking at the horses and back at each other several times we nervously got on them and started walking up the mountains with our guide. The scenery was amazing and after 15 minutes we were both relaxed and enjoying the ride. After about an hour we stopped for a snack to admire the views from above, took some pictures and carried on up the mountain. When we reached a flat part Vics horse suddenly went from a gentle walk to a trot then a full on gallop! Scott was a bit concerned when she and the horse dissapeared into the distance and only a few screams could be heard but once he caught up and saw she was fine he had a little chuckle at it, only for 10 mins late for his horse to do the same! We reached the bottom of devils tooth mountain and thought we would climb maybe a couple of rocks and take some pictures but the guide kept climbing and climbing and suggested we do the same so we followed him up and up this mountain, with only sharp rocks and the cloff edge to
hold on to, it was like something from Bear Grylls! We finally reached the top both breathless as it was so high the air was really thin, and couldn't belive it when we saw how high we actually were - over 4000m! In the distance we could see the highest mountain in La Paz which was covered in snow and over 4,600m. We were both amazed at the views and spent some time sitting on this rock at the top of the mountain, you couldn't hear a sound and it was pretty mad. We managed to climb back down which took a while as there was nothing really to hold on to and it was back on the horses for the ride back to the ranch which was down the mountains and should have taken about 45 mins. Whenever Scott's horse or thr guides horse tried to trot or gallop Vics hiorse had to go faster like it was a race and by this point her legs were killing so she didn't want to be galloping anymolre but the horse insisted! It should have been as relaxing going down as it ws coming up. However, the guides horse was misbehaving
on the way down and kept bucking and trying to take control. At one point it galloped so fast it went into the back of Scotts horse which made his horse buck and gallop, Scott thought he was going to fall off but managed to hang and then Vics horse went into a gallop too, by the time they stopped we were all a bit shaken and ready to get back to the ranch! The 2 hour trip lasted over 4 hours and the guide was excellent, we both loved this trip and again saw some amazing scenery and it really was a great end to our time in Bolivia.
When we got back to the hostel we went for dinner at a small mexican restaurant that everyone had told us about which was really good, then we packed and went to bed looking forward to the next part of our trip- Rio! But first we had to get there which would involve over 24 hours of travelling and 3 plane rides....
Bolivia is gritty, dirty and poor but it really stole our hearts and we ended up loving the place, it had the most diverse scenery in
the world, crazy made up laws, self imposed taxes, cheap food and extreme weather- what a country!!
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rosana hassan
non-member comment
wow!
absolutely loved this blog guys... the strange wrestling, the strange horses and horse-riding, the prison and the scenery :)))) simply brilliant! you really are having the time of your lives and i am so envious ;) the photo's are stunning too xxxxx